


Care for He Who Has Borne the Battle

by B_Radley



Series: Genesis and Coda [5]
Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Caretaking, Gen, Respite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/pseuds/B_Radley
Summary: A Fulcrum and a Queen watch over the father of the Rebellion.





	Care for He Who Has Borne the Battle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SLWalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/gifts).



> From a prompt by SLWalker: Caring for Bail.

The young woman, known for all of nine months as Fulcrum, waits outside the hatch. She wonders if she will be walking down another set of stairs, leaving behind a life chosen for her.

A series of unfortunate happenings had caused her to go dark and cut herself off from the movement that the man inside the hatch had brought her into.

A movement that might be her last chance in a Galaxy in which her kind have been hunted to extinction.

A light flashes on and the door snaps open. Ahsoka Tano rises and walks into the office.

Bail Organa sits at his desk. Her eyes widen as she sees how much he has apparently aged in the last months since she had seen him. His normally bronze face is pale and appears gaunt. Dark circles seem to live in permanence under his eyes.

Eyes that are sad and listless. In the two years since the Republic had fallen, the responsibility for forming some sort of covert resistance to the darkness had fallen on his shoulders.

The pain of loss—of his beloved Republic, as well as the bulwark, however flawed they might have been—the Jedi, is written in every new mark on his careworn face.

She looks down. Every argument—every defense that she had prepared for her submersion in the Outer Rim, even though it was entirely justified, evaporates at the look in his dark eyes. She starts to speak. He stands up.

Her eyes widen as his hand goes to his head. He wavers, his free hand on the desk, attempting to steady himself.

That free hand collapses as he begins to sink towards the deck.

Her vaunted ex-Jedi reflexes and she is only able to catch him inches from the deck.

His appearance may have been more gaunt than she is used to, but she can feel the solid muscle of his body as she supports him, then lowers him to the carpeting. He is breathing, his face relaxing even as she looks at him.

She checks his pulse, trying to remember her combat medical training. His breathing evens out into a rhythmic rise and fall. Her expression grows less alarmed.

She closes her eyes and connects to her mystical partner. She draws on it and her own physical strength to lift him in her arms. She manages to carry him into the inner chamber and gently deposit him on the bed, pulling him around until his head rests on the pillow.

She reaches down and pulls off that omnipresent cape, as well as his boots. She loosens his collar.

Ahsoka sighs and starts to get up. A low moan and words sift through her hearing. “Breha!” he says, his voice plaintive. The next name cuts through her own heart. “Padme!” The name is repeated in a voice so filled with grief. The grief of loss. Of loss of a dear friend taken before her time.

A loss that is a part of her litany of Remembrance as well.

Ahsoka knows that it will be hours before they reach Alderaan. Before there can be comfort for him.

She closes her eyes. Without hesitation, she opens them, and sits on the bed, moving to the head. She gently lifts his head and lays it in her lap. Her fingers move once, twice, through his hair. Her mind thinks of others that bear burdens. Of those that bear the battle as sure as she does out in the galaxy.

For longer than she has.

~=~=~=~=~=

Bail Organa struggles towards the light and the soft voice. His eyes snap open and he jerks up. He realizes that he is lying in his bed on the _Tantive III._ The soft voice comes from his wife, singing a soft ballad under her breath. She sees him awake and smiles. “Hey, Bantha. See what your stubbornness gets you?”

“What? What happened?” The Viceroy-Consort is very eloquent when he is awakened.

Her dark eyes flash, then just as quickly calm. “You nearly worked yourself into the ground, is what happened,” she says, a mixture of anger and raw love in her voice. Her face grows serious. “Bail, I have told you. Let somebody else take some of this off of your plate. Let me take more.”

“No,” he shouts, fully awake. He looks away, shamed at his outburst.

“I’m sorry, Bre. We’ve talked about this. I don’t want you involved. You have to be able to deny knowledge of any of this—,” he starts.

She stands up and walks over to him. She stills his lips with her own. “Don’t you think the Empire will kill all of us, even if you try to distance yourself? We have plans in place to get Leia out. Sabe’ and Gregar will make sure of that.”

She pokes her finger in his chest. He manages to refrain from rubbing it. “Besides, Bail Organa. We are partners. Partners in everything.” She kisses him again, then sighs. “Can’t you at least appoint a Representative to handle your proxy in the Senate? That could ease your burden a bit. Especially if the representative is _annointed_. His eyebrow raises as she uses their term for one who knows what his little extended business trips entail.

“I don’t know, Bre,” he says. “I don’t know if I can trust anybody. Look what happened with Padme’ and Jar Jar Binks.” They both are silent as they think of absent friends. She finally shakes her head. “I think that was a special case. A different time.”

He considers her words. “I might consent. But only if you agree to take some help on, as well.” His eyes crinkle. She can tell he has a scheme. “How about resurrecting the position of the Hand of the Queen? They can do both.”

She starts to protest, then stops. He can see the wheels turning. “Might be worth a try. But we might have to work someone up to doing both.”

“Something tells me you have someone in mind,” he says. She says nothing.

“So how did I wind up in bed?” Breha smiles and jerks her head to his left.

Sitting in the chair is his Fulcrum. His paladin. At this precise moment, her head is pillowed on her hand, her eyes closed.

As close to still as he has ever seen her. Looking all the world like a teenager, curled up where she could.

Which, of course, she still is. For a moment, he wonders what a normal life would have looked like for her. Would she have been trying to impress a boy or a girl with her hunting prowess? Would she be a university student, trying to determine the mysteries of the Mandalorian _Diaspora_? Would she be bringing a tiny hunter or huntress to her breast, as her mate looked on?

His eyes close, just as his reverie is interrupted. “She put you in bed and stayed with you for the twenty hours or so in hyperspace.” The grin turns mischievous. “I understand that those sharp teeth can scare the hell out of crewmembers who attempt to disturb her boss.”

He starts to smile, then lets his eyes grow wide. He looks down at himself, then back to his wife. “How the hell did I get out of my clothes and into my pajamas?” he asks thunderously, his face growing red.

His beloved’s eyes shine with merriment. “I am sure she was able to keep from swooning at what she saw,” she says dryly.

Bail’s eyes grow sad as he looks at Ahsoka. “I am supposed to take care of her, not the other way around.”

Breha climbs into the bed next to him. She takes him in her arms. “Bail, you told me when you first took her on, that she was a protector. That she would give everything to protect. I think that just might extend to stubborn dumbasses who don’t eat or sleep for thirty hours.”

He makes a sound in his throat. “I was going to chew her ass out for going dark for months. It was a huge risk.”

She says nothing. In her mind, she is seeing him having to send her to a place where she won’t come back.

He smiles at her and kisses her. “I think she made the right call though. She is just so damned young and takes so many risks.”

She returns his kiss. “She was pretty damned young when thrown into the war, as well. You gave her a choice, love.”

They are both silent as they bask in each other. She sees a smirk play over his handsome features. She starts as she feels his hand move under her skirts. “Wonder how sound of a sleeper she is?" he says.

Breha, Queen of Alderaan, punches her consort in the chest.

As they both lie down and Bail’s eyes close again, she thinks of the support that all of them will need in the coming years.

Her mind is drawn to a Naboo teenager. A survivor. A Handmaiden mourning her Queen, as well as other losses. A Handmaiden who broods over her perceived failure and survival.

A Handmaiden who sits in the Palace, healing, wondering what her place in the universe will be.

Breha Organa might have a idea about that.

She smiles as she thinks of those who will bear the battle. Who will lift each other up.


End file.
